Eastern troops

Eastern troops were units of the German Wehrmacht in the German-Soviet War , which were formed from the autumn of 1941 from Soviet prisoners of war and volunteers from the German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union .

history

Due to the high personnel losses of the Wehrmacht in the Russian campaign, Soviet defectors began to be deployed on the German side as so-called volunteers in the field of non-fencing troops in the autumn of 1941 in order to free German soldiers for combat deployment. In the rear army areas , so-called protection teams were set up in platoon and company strength to clear the area of ​​dispersed Red Army soldiers and partisans.

From March 1942, reinforcement to battalion strength was allowed and so-called Eastern battalions were set up, which comprised up to 950 men, including 36 German officers and NCOs as support staff. The leadership of these eastern battalions, which were mainly recruited from ethnic minorities, Turkmens, North Caucasians, Volga Tatars, Kalmyks, Armenians, Azerbaijani and Georgians, was taken over by the headquarters of the disbanded 162nd Infantry Division . There were also other eastern battalions, which had been set up by local commanders, in which Balts, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Greeks and Siberians served.

In the summer of 1942, an office general of the volunteer associations was set up in the OKH , which was concerned with the formation and training of Eastern troops and volunteers in the field and replacement army. The General of the Volunteer Associations was under the command of the volunteer associations with the Chief of Army Armament and Commander of the Replacement Army . At the beginning of 1943 there were 176 Eastern Battalions and 38 Eastern Companies with a total strength of 130,000 - 150,000 men, which rose to 230,000 - 320,000 men by June 1943. By the turn of the year 1943/44, almost 500,000 Eastern troops and volunteers were serving in the Wehrmacht, of which around 370,000 were assigned to the Eastern troops.

Hitler , who in the autumn of 1943 had already thought of dissolving the eastern battalions, was only changed by his military advisers to the extent that these units should only be deployed on other fronts than the eastern front in the future. Any political goals that had been associated with the use of these troops in parts of the Wehrmacht leadership were thus finally removed from the ground.

By June 1944, the number of eastern battalions rose to about 200, most of which were deployed in the west and the Mediterranean. About 60 eastern battalions served for coastal protection on the Atlantic Wall , where they were mostly assigned individually to the infantry regiments of the native infantry divisions. Another seven battalions from the east , as well as the 1st Cossack Cavalry Division, were subordinate to the Commander in Chief Southeast in the Balkans. But also in Italy and in the Reichskommissariaten Ostland and Ukraine , the eastern battalions were deployed, including one of the two divisions of the eastern troops, the 162nd (Turkish) Infantry Division (Italy).

During the fighting in Normandy , the eastern battalions showed little readiness for action, many eastern troops laid down their weapons, some even mutinied and shot the German support personnel.

At the end of 1944, a 2nd Cossack Cavalry Division was set up, which together with the 1st Cossack Cavalry Division, the XV. Cossack cavalry corps , which shortly before the end of the war was still subordinate to the Waffen SS .

The members of the Eastern troops who were taken prisoner by the Western Allies at the end of the war were usually returned to the Soviet Union, where they were sentenced to camp detention or death for collaboration.

See also

• Eastern Legions
• Russian Liberation Army
• Ukraiinska Nazionalna Armija
• White Ruthenian Home Guard
• Foreign volunteers of the Waffen SS , the majority of these men came from the Soviet Union

literature

• Rolf-Dieter Müller: On the side of the Wehrmacht. Hitler's foreign helpers in the "Crusade against Bolshevism" 1941–1945 , Christoph Links, Berlin 2007, ISBN 9783861534488 .

Reviews

• Lutz Mäurer: Smiled at and despised in the catastrophe. - Second World War: Hitler's allies in the fight against the Soviet Union - a topic that has hardly been dealt with , From Politics and Contemporary History , 40–41, 2007.
• Rüdiger von Dehn, Bergische Universität Wuppertal : on "On the side of the Wehrmacht" (PDF; 59 kB), In H-Soz-u-Kult , January 10, 2008.

Web links

• Foreigners in! , one day, contemporary history on SpiegelOnline, November 17, 2007